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Journalism of Courage
The Mufti Mohammed Sayeed government8217;s bid to return Jammu and Kashmir to a patriarchal paradigm is regressive in the extreme. Last week the legislative assembly passed a bill, with alarming speed, to deny equal property and employment rights to women who choose to marry 8216;8216;non-state subjects8217;8217;. In its content, the Permanent Resident Disqualification Bill codifies medieval notions about a woman8217;s identity being subsumed by her husband8217;s. In its provenance, it raises the spectre of legislative intervention to wrest away fundamental rights that a citizen has fought for legally. And in its entirety, the bill is an audacious and untenable attempt to alienate a woman from her land. It is to be hoped that the political controversy that the issue has created in this electoral season will inspire a rethink.
The issue of a woman8217;s resident status and her choice of groom has a long history in J038;K. In the 1920s, Maharaja Hari Singh had pushed through a law detailing the rights of a 8216;8216;state subject8217;8217; in the 1920s. Later, its contents were preserved through an executive order. Stories 8212; many apocryphal 8212; abound of parents resorting to innovative tactics to get around the legal denial of their property to a daughter marrying someone from outside J038;K. In 2002, however, the high court upheld a Kashmiri woman8217;s petition against the order. In a farcical re-enactment of the Shah Bano episode, the state legislature drafted this bill to re-deny women what the court had recently termed their fundamental rights.
